


The Broken Glass Job

by Lirelyn



Series: The Long Slow Yes Job [1]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Eliot Spencer, For some definition of happy, Getting Together, Grumpy Eliot Spencer, Multi, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22923808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirelyn/pseuds/Lirelyn
Summary: A chance meeting at the brewpub shows Hardison new possibilities for his relationship with Eliot.To Eliot, they're neither new, nor possible.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Eliot Spencer, Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Series: The Long Slow Yes Job [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672750
Comments: 75
Kudos: 393





	1. Chapter 1

“Eliot Spencer!” called a voice across the bar. “Wow. Of all the gin joints in all — Portland.”

The man seemed harmless: normal, cheerful, no hidden menace in his voice. Which was why it was so interesting, the way Eliot’s shoulders tensed at the greeting. Like they did in the first moment when he sensed a threat in the room. Hardison didn’t even know he noticed that kind of thing until it showed up here, in the brewpub, on a relaxed evening where their mark and anyone connected with him was a hundred miles away. Just seeing that tension put Hardison on alert, made him run a quick inventory: the back was locked and dark, Parker was across the room. If anything went down, the other patrons were the only worry.

But instead of shifting into fighting mode, Eliot put on a warm smile before turning around. “James. How ya been? What’ll you have? On the house.”

“I’ll take an old fashioned. Is this your place? I had no idea! Never expected to see you settle somewhere like this... that must be quite a story.”

“Yeah,” said Eliot, glancing sideways at Hardison. “Yeah, it is. What about you, what brings you here?”

“Conference,” said the man, wrinkling his nose. “This is a nice surprise, though. If you happen to be free later...” In any other context Hardison would have been sure of what that tone meant, and he watched in astonishment as Eliot swallowed, nearly fumbled with a glass, and very carefully did not look anywhere in Hardison’s direction.

“Uh. I’m not sure. We’re shortstaffed this week and I’ve got — listen, sorry, I’d love to catch up, I’ve just got to check on something in the back...”

The visitor waved the glass Eliot had just handed him. “Say no more. Duty calls.” He looked after Eliot a little wryly, and sipped his drink.

Hardison wanted a drink himself. More, he wanted someone else to see what he was seeing. By virtue of furious hisses, he got Parker to come over.

“That guy knows Eliot,” he whispered to her. They both looked the stranger over. He was dark-haired, handsome, expensive suit. Not a bruiser, and certainly not someone from Eliot’s hometown.

“Business contact?” Parker said. “Maybe a former boss, from before Nate?”

Hardison shook his head. “He doesn’t tend to like his former bosses. And they seemed friendly. Maybe... more than friendly.”

“What do you mean?”

“How do you think Eliot would act if a girl he used to go out with walked in here unexpectedly? Someone he liked, but wasn’t sure he wanted to see again.”

Parker frowned. “I don’t know. How would he act?”

Hardison turned his back on the bar and gave a quick, hushed pantomime of Eliot’s manner. “Hey, how you been? What’ll you have? I’d love to catch up, I just need to go check on something...”

Parker grinned. “Oh yeah. That’s exactly how he’d be.” She looked over Hardison’s shoulder. “So you think he and that guy...”

“Is that crazy? Tell me that’s crazy.” He wanted her to say yes, there was no way Eliot had ever been involved with a man, he was being weird and everything could go back to normal. Or he wanted her to say no, it made total sense, in fact she’d suspected for some time...

Parker just shrugged. “We could ask him,” she said.

“No. No way. Eliot would kill us.”

“I meant we could ask Eliot.”

“How we gonna ask him that?” Parker narrowed her eyes at him like he’d said something nonsensical. And she was right, it was a simple question, only the thought of asking it made Hardison want to disappear into the floor. “You know what? Never mind. It’s probably nothing, I’m probably reading too much into it.”

She gave him a look he knew well, a careful scan of his face and body language, making sure she was taking in all the data and drawing the right conclusion. Sometimes it made him feel cared-for, covered, warm. Sometimes, like now, it made him feel uncomfortably exposed.

“Why are you so anxious?” she asked. Before Hardison could think how to answer that, the stranger at the bar stood up and pulled his wallet out. Scribbling something on a bill, he finished his drink and left. Parker flashed a grin at Hardison and strolled casually to where the man had been sitting.

“He left his number on it,” she reported back. “You want it? You could find out who he is and maybe how he knows Eliot.”

“Eliot would _kill_ us,” said Hardison. “Besides, it’s his private business. I don’t even know why I cared. We should just leave it alone.”

Parker was plainly unconvinced, and no wonder. He made up a reason to go back into the office, and even he knew his casual tone was a failure. His heart was hammering. It felt like the room had turned upside down, only instead of everything crashing to the ceiling, several things were falling neatly into place, like Tetris blocks, clicking into the spot where they had always belonged.

***

Parker slipped into the kitchen after the rest of the staff had left, and Eliot was doing prep for the next day. He handed her a knife without speaking; he’d established the rule months ago that if you wanted to hang out while he was working, you were going to be working too. She began slicing yesterday’s bread into small, even cubes. “Did you used to go out with that guy who was here earlier?”

He paused, holding an empty eggshell over a bowl. “What guy?”

“The one who left his number and a 60% tip.”

Eliot began whisking the eggs rapidly. “Um. Yeah. Yeah I did. Long time ago.”

Parker nodded. “Are you going to call him?”

“I dunno. Thinking about it.” Spices and milk went into the bowl. Parker watched Eliot curiously. She’d come to ask him in the first place because something about it was making Hardison anxious, and clearly it was making Eliot anxious too. Why, she couldn’t tell. The pieces she had didn’t fit together in a way that made sense, so she must be missing one. She slid the bread into the pan that was prepared for it, and waited.

“Are you surprised?” Eliot asked after a long time. “That I dated — him?”

Parker considered. “A little I guess. He looks more like the kind of people we take down. _Very_ expensive suit.”

Eliot laughed explosively. “He’s a doctor. I guess there’s a conference in town — he’s not a suit.” He poured the egg mixture into the pan. “I meant because he’s a guy.”

“Oh,” said Parker. “No. Why would I be?”

Eliot blinked, then shrugged. “Can’t answer that. People are, usually.” _Normal people,_ he meant, and she filed that away in her vast catalogue of ‘normal people’ reactions. It was useful when she had to play one. 

Eliot covered the pan and put it in the refrigerator. Still with his back to her, he said, “Does Hardison know?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing much.” She watched as he piled dishes into the sink and scrubbed furiously. “Why are you and Hardison so freaked out?”

Eliot paused, then scrubbed harder. “He’s freaked out?”

“I don’t know. He was being weird. You’re both being weird. I don’t like it.” The way the three of them normally understood each other, trusted each other, was essential for their job, but to Parker it was more than that. It was the water she swam in: it was what let her feel for the first time in her life like she could breathe, just breathe, instead of flopping and gasping when other people were near. Something was disturbing that water now, and she needed it to go away.

Eliot sighed. “Guys I work with — they don’t like to know. That I sometimes date other guys. It’s why I don’t talk about it.”

“It’s Hardison. What does Hardison have to do with the guys you used to work with?”

He shook his head. “You’re the one who said he was freaked out.”

“So are you.”

“I’m not freaked out. I just... I didn’t want it to be a thing. What I do in my off time — it doesn’t have anything to do with the two of you.”

She could have said a lot of things to that, starting with the very logical ‘Then why does it matter whether we know or not?’ But he was lying when he said he wasn’t freaked out, and it was very clear that she was missing a key piece of this, so she didn’t know what she could say that would actually help.

She wished Sophie was in town. Sophie would know what was happening and how to fix it. But after Sophie, the person she trusted most with people stuff was Hardison. Whatever was going on, he wouldn’t let it get in the way of their being a team. “Just talk to Hardison. Figure it out.”

“Yeah,” said Eliot. He sounded like he’d rather face down an entire room full of Russian mobsters, but she knew he’d do it.


	2. Chapter 2

“So, uh...”

“What, Hardison?” Eliot snapped, eyes narrow on the road ahead.

“So you and that guy —”

“Yeah, me and that guy. A long time ago. Got a problem with that?”

“No, man, no, no problem. It’s cool. I just didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know what, didn’t know the name and gender of everybody I’ve ever dated? Of course you didn’t. I’ve dated a lot of people.”

“Yeah, of course. I just didn’t know you’d dated any — guys.”

“Well, now you know.” Eliot accelerated as if he could drive straight out of this conversation. 

“Yeah. Yeah, now I know. Is it uh — is it like a general thing? Have you dated other guys or is it like just — that one guy?”

“You want a full rundown of my history? We can start in the seventh grade — I need to know if you’re counting one-night things, though, ‘cause that will make this take a lot longer.”

“No, that’s not what I — Look, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be insensitive —”

“Dammit Hardison!” Eliot slapped the wheel. “It’s not that complicated, okay? I like who I like.”

“Yeah, okay.” Hardison fell quiet, and Eliot was annoyed to discover that this did not make him feel any better. The unspoken thing was just hanging there. They drove in silence past two abandoned cars, several yards apart on Hardison’s side. Eliot sighed and bit the bullet. “I’m not gonna hit on you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Hardison laughed, but he sounded uncomfortable. He turned his head and looked out the window, where a third abandoned car sat. Then he added, barely audible, “Who says I’d mind if you did?”

Eliot’s hands froze on the wheel. He'd misheard that, had to have. A fourth car sat abandoned, this time on Eliot’s side of the road. He glanced over at the back of Hardison’s head, at his face reflected in the window, at the series of three ditched cars stretching back in the side mirror. Then he pulled the van over abruptly, screeching to a halt on the shoulder. Hardison turned his head and their eyes locked.

He couldn’t possibly have heard what he thought he’d heard. He tried to reshape the words into something else, but there was Hardison staring at him, looking both hopeful and terrified, which was exactly how Eliot felt too. It was all too much all at once, and fortunately there was a simpler problem at hand.

He jerked his thumb toward the road behind them. “Something back there seem not right to you?”

***

Hardison couldn’t make himself stand still while he waited for Eliot to check out the abandoned car. It was good that something job-related had come up, probably definitely good. He needed to regroup, take stock, before they pushed this — thing any further. But it was definitely going further; that one moment, that blue stare, had made that clear. Something inside him liquefied at the thought.

Eliot crawled out from under the car. “Definitely a bomb.”

“Let me see,” said Hardison, starting to crouch down. Eliot’s hand gripped his arm.

“Wait. I didn’t see a timer. We don’t know what’s going to trigger it, or when.”

“Right, okay,” said Hardison, thinking. “But we _do_ know that our mark will be driving down this road in the next fifteen, twenty minutes, with some bad memories and a whole lot of incriminating papers. We may not know what triggers it, but I think we know when it’s going off.”

“Okay. So we park Lucille across the road back there, we get them to turn around. If we have to, you can blow your cover, and I’ll go solo in the warehouse.”

Hardison shook his head. _“You_ park Lucille up here to stop traffic coming this way, and _you_ stand back there and get him to turn around. _I_ disarm the bomb.”

“Hardison, that thing is big and it looked pretty inaccessible. We should just divert the mark and then put in a call, let the pros handle it.”

“You saying I’m not a pro? You saying you trust some police squad to handle that bomb over me?”

“I’m saying if it gets tripped accidentally I’d rather have them under it than you.”

“That’s sweet,” Hardison grinned, and grinned more at the way Eliot flinched. This could get fun. “But how long’s it going to take a pro squad to get out here? Thirty minutes, minimum. With a big-ass car bomb or four just sitting by the road, for anyone to drive by and trip. How you gonna feel seeing that on the news?”

“So we wait, keep diverting traffic until they get here.”

“We don’t have _time._ Parker’s off comms and she’s counting on us to be at the warehouse first. Come on, man. I’m Alec Hardison. I’ll have this thing disarmed before you’ve gotten your ass down to the first car.”

Eliot was out of arguments, so they turned Lucille to block traffic at this end of the trap. “Make it fast,” said Eliot, “and get out of there if it looks bad.”

“I’m not trying to get blown up today,” said Hardison. Eliot started to run for the other end of the trap. “Hey — kiss for luck?”

Eliot turned and stared at him. For a moment Hardison thought he was actually going to do it. Then he rolled his eyes, said, “You don’t need luck,” and ran down the road.

Hardison’s pulse was racing and it wasn’t because of the bomb. Until he saw the bomb. Eliot hadn’t been kidding. It _was_ big, and very inaccessible. He couldn’t even see the wires he’d need to get at. He’d be working half-blind at best. He scanned the undercarriage, thinking. Something else was nagging at him. Four cars. Why four? One bomb this size was plenty. Maybe two, one on each side of the road, just in case they managed to swerve out of range when the first one blew. Four just made it look suspicious. What were the other two cars there for?

***

It had been a joke, Eliot thought as he passed the last car and took his stance in the middle of the oncoming lane. Hardison would have been shocked if he’d — it had been a joke. But in the back of his brain, that beast of a car bomb hovered and the phrase _kiss for luck, kiss for luck, kiss for luck_ hammered on repeat. He might actually need luck for once, and the stupid, superstitious, irrational voice that Eliot never listened to was yelling that if this went bad, it was going to be all his fault.

“I’m in position,” he said for the comm. “How’s it going?”

“Busy,” said Hardison shortly. “Hey, can you peek under that first car? You weren’t wrong, this thing is nasty, and I want to see —”

Eliot was already under the car. “I don’t see a bomb. I don’t see anything unusual.”

“Cool. Cool. I’m gonna try something.”

“Don’t do anything stupid — shit!” said Eliot. Something was coming down the road. He scrambled out and ran toward it, waving his hands. It wasn’t the mark’s car, it was a minivan, driven by a harassed-looking woman. She tried to swerve around him, and he had to all but throw himself on the hood to make her stop.

She was about forty, permed and bleached hair, at least three kids in the back. She looked both furious and terrified as he came up to the window. He smiled broadly and let his accent go deep.

“I’m so sorry, ma’am,” he said, “there’s a big tree down ahead. Power lines all over the road. Road’s completely closed.”

“I didn’t see any signs,” she said, fear changing to annoyance.

“Haven’t had time to put ‘em up yet. Just got here myself.”

She peered up the road suspiciously. “I don’t see any tree.”

“It’s past that van, ma’am. If you’ll just turn around —”

“You don’t look like a construction worker. Y’all don’t even have flares? You’re trying to pull something, trying to get me to drive down some back road so you can hijack me and take my kids.”

God almighty. “Budget cuts, ma’am,” he said, throwing every ounce of rueful charm into his smile. “Believe me, I’d be a lot happier with flares and a hard hat. And I don’t mind what road you drive down, long as it ain’t this one.” He glanced into the van. The nearest kid looked about nine, and very bored. He raised his voice. “You know what happens when a live wire hits a van like this, all full of people? It ain’t pretty.”

The nine-year-old perked up her ears. “What happens?” she said, wide-eyed.

“Last one I saw, the bodies were —”

“Okay!” snapped the woman, giving him a glare that would have curdled milk. “We’ll turn around.” She threw the van in reverse before Eliot could say anything else, and turned away.

“Hardison, what’s your status? The mark’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“I’m under the other car,” said Hardison over the comm. “I think I can — whoops.”

A yellow ball of fire tore apart the third car from inside. “Hardison!” Eliot shouted, running down the road. He’d misheard, Hardison hadn’t said ‘other car’, he had to be still under the — but then the fourth car blew too. Eliot kept running, as if he could outrun the knowledge that absolutely nothing under either car could have survived.

A hand grabbed him as he passed the second car, and there was Hardison with his wide stupid grin on his stupid beautiful face. Eliot shoved him against the car, then grabbed his face in both hands and kissed him hard.

There was just a flash of surprised stillness, and then Hardison’s arms were around Eliot’s shoulders and he was kissing him back hungrily. For five seconds, there was only Hardison’s lips, lush and soft and eager, Hardison’s hands gripping him tight and pressing him close. For five seconds, everything in the world was better than good.

Then a wild panic flooded Eliot and he shoved Hardison’s shoulders, propelling himself away. “DAMMIT, Hardison! Don’t scare me like that!” he shouted, and stormed away toward Lucille, between the roaring blaze of cars.


	3. Chapter 3

“Four cars, right?” said Hardison. The first five minutes back in Lucille had been absolutely silent; then they had both started talking rapidly about the job. “The last two were obvious, one to blow and another for a failsafe in case they dodged it. But the other two — those were for timing. You need two points to find velocity. The first two cars had sensors to clock the mark as he passed — probably using his cell phone, maybe a GPS in his car. That gets you his speed, and then the second car cues the last two to blow at the exact right time. Pretty sweet setup.”

“You said ‘whoops’,” said Eliot, furious. “Why’d you say ‘whoops’?”

“I’m not saying I _couldn’t_ have disarmed that bomb, but it was ugly, and we were short on time, so I figured I’d just trigger it early. I found the sensor under the second car, but I meant to come out from under before I blew it, check that everything was clear. I just hit it by accident before I could do that.”

“Don’t you _ever_ say ‘whoops’ again unless you’re actually about to blow yourself up.”

“I’ll remember that for next time.” Hardison leaned his head back, grinning. He’d been overwhelmed, those first few minutes after the kiss, but with Eliot being grumpy and normal at him, he was starting to relax. “We gonna talk about that other thing?”

Eliot’s hands clenched on the wheel. “Nothing to talk about.”

“Nothing? Really. _That_ was nothing. Listen, Eliot —”

“No, _you_ listen!” Eliot yelled. He took a deep breath. “I was scared. I thought — I was relieved to see you. I lost it for a second. But you and Parker are everything to me, okay? I’d never do anything to mess that up. So just forget about it.”

Parker. Her name landed like a brick to Hardison’s gut. He hadn’t even thought — well, it wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about Parker. It was more like he hadn’t thought of her as absent; he’d felt like she was there alongside him. If he’d thought it out at all, he’d have remembered that she was curled inside a shielded crate at the warehouse, and for once she couldn’t hear everything they said to each other. He was so used to the feeling that anything said on a job was said between all three of them. It wasn’t till this minute that he saw what had happened: he’d flirted with their best friend, he’d _kissed_ him, while she was locked out of the loop. How was she going to feel about that? And what did that make him?

The rest of the drive was spent in leaden silence. He remembered how upset she’d been when he’d just flirted with a client. And that was before they were together. What had he been thinking? And how could he possibly make it right with her? He couldn’t even ask Eliot for advice, not this time. He felt sick.

Eliot pulled up at the warehouse. “Come on,” he said, not looking at Hardison. “We have a job to do.”

***

“Okay,” said Parker the moment they’d dropped Eliot off at his place. “What is happening with you two?” The job had gone off without a hitch, but the celebration was tense and half-hearted, and the silence on the ride back was miserable. Parker spent the latter half of it debating whether she should call Sophie back from Naples, or just trick the boys into a locked room and refuse to let them out until they’d settled whatever was going on.

“Let’s wait till we get back to my place. Please,” said Hardison. And that was the worst because now it wasn’t just Eliot he was being weird with. The ‘please’ was serious enough that she didn’t say anything, but she started plotting how she could get them into that locked room.

He made her sit down on his sofa before he would say anything, and he took a deep breath and looked her in the eye. “I’ve got to tell you something, and I’m afraid you won’t like it.”

“Okay.”

“When we were on our way to the warehouse, while you were off comms — I kissed Eliot.”

She waited. After a minute he said, “I’m really sorry — I wasn’t thinking — I get it if you’re upset and I will do _anything_ you need to make it right.”

“Wait. That’s it?” There had to be something else that was getting him so worked up.

“Uh, yeah. Pretty much.”

“You thought I’d be upset because you kissed Eliot?”

“Yeah I mean — I thought you might be... jealous.”

Parker snorted and started laughing. “Can you imagine? Me being jealous of Eliot?”

“Yes, babe, I can, _vividly!_ I’ve been imagining it basically nonstop since it happened.”

She laughed harder. It was partly because the idea was such nonsense, and mostly just because she was relieved. She had that missing piece now, and everything was going to be okay.

Hardison was not amused. “It’s not like you’ve never been jealous before. You broke a damn bottle in your hands.”

She tried to calm down. He was serious, and that memory was serious. She still had a piece of the bottle, wrapped in a handkerchief and tucked into the back of her favorite safe. She’d saved it because it would keep better than a pretzel. “That was different.” It was different in so many ways it was hard to pick one. “She was a stranger, and I thought you were going to go away from us, and be with her.” _And I thought you would like her better than me, and I thought she deserved you more than I did._ Those feelings were far in the past, but still a little sore to remember. “If you’re with Eliot, you don’t go away.”

Hardison looked a little alarmed. “No one said anything about being _with_ ... anyone.”

“Isn’t that what you want?” Now that she saw it, it made perfect sense.

Hardison was quiet, thinking. “I hadn’t really gotten that far. Things... escalated pretty fast.” He took her hand, rubbed the front and back of it, laced his fingers with hers. “That wouldn’t bother you?”

“It’s Eliot.” Apparently this wasn’t enough of an explanation, as he still looked at her with that soft, concerned frown. Hardison was the smartest person she knew, and he understood her so well, but even he sometimes failed to get it. How could she explain it to him? “Eliot’s part of us. We all belong together. Kissing or dating or sex or whatever... it doesn’t change that. Right?”

Hardison nodded slowly. “Right. Absolutely.” He kept playing with her hand and looking down thoughtfully, then suddenly he swooped her up into his lap. “You’re amazing,” he said into the crook of her neck. “The actual best. I can’t believe —” he leaned back to look in her face, and he was beaming that incandescent smile that was one of her favorite sights in the whole world. “I can’t believe how lucky I am.”

That was a smile that begged to be kissed, so she kissed each cheek in turn, moving back and forth toward the corners of his mouth, and he pulled her in close again.

***

Later, when they were cuddled together in his bed, Hardison said, “Hey, Parker. Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

It was hours since that conversation, but she knew what he meant. “It’s Eliot,” she said again.

“Yeah, but — it still might change some things. _Will_ change some things. Like, if he and I had a date, and you wanted to see me that same night...”

She kissed his nose. “We plan cons to take down multi-millionaires. I think we can manage a calendar.”

“Okay, fair...” He held her face between his hands. “I just want to make sure. That you’re really okay. I don’t want you to go along with something that feels bad just to make me happy.”

All she wanted to do was tease him for being silly and kiss him incessantly for being so good, for making her feel so sure that he would always, always take care of her. But he needed her to be serious so she made her face serious.

“It doesn’t feel bad. It feels good. It feels like...” she searched for the words. “Bringing him home. Where he belongs.”

There was that lit-up smile again. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He kissed her, then looked at her curiously. “Do _you_ want to kiss Eliot?”

She honestly hadn’t thought about it. She never did think about kissing people, in a _wanting-to-do-that_ kind of way. She’d only wanted to kiss Hardison after they’d already done it for a con, and she’d found out how nice it felt. “I don’t know. Maybe, sometime. Not right now.”

“Okay,” he said, folding her in his arms again.

Face muffled against his chest, she asked, “When are you going to talk to him?”

Hardison took a deep breath. “Tomorrow. Tomorrow night.”


	4. Chapter 4

The last of the staff had gone home. Eliot was closing up the kitchen and came out to find Hardison at the bar, a pint in his hand and another next to him.

He’d known this was coming. He wanted to walk straight back out again, but he gritted his teeth and came forward. Better to just get it over. The counter was spotless, but he grabbed a rag and began wiping it anyway.

“Hey,” said Hardison.

“Hey.”

“So, I talked to Parker.”

“About what?”

“Come on, man.” Eliot felt Hardison’s eyes on him, not having any of his bullshit. Worse, he heard his own voice, inside his head, echoing Hardison’s words. _Come on, man. Do this right._ He met Hardison’s eyes, just for a second. Mistake. His look was open, direct, sincere, like it always was, and he wasn’t even trying to hide a little hopeful smile. If that hope had been about anything else in the world, Eliot would have moved heaven and earth to make it happen. Here, it twisted in him like a knife. Worse than a knife, because he knew exactly how fast he’d heal from a stab wound, and he had no idea how long it would take to recover from this. He looked away, fighting the impulse to just get angry. _Do it right. He deserves that._

He took the other beer and leaned his elbows against the bar, carefully staying just out of arm’s reach. “Okay. So you talked to Parker.”

“Yeah, and she’s — she’s cool with it. Didn’t even faze her.”

Of course it hadn’t. You never knew with Parker, but — yeah, it made sense. In a Parker way. Made his job in this conversation a lot harder though. “Well, good. I’m glad she’s not upset.”

“No, she was — she was even kind of happy, you know. We talked about it and — I think it could work.”

“You think it could — what could work?”

“Us, you and me. And Parker. It kinda makes sense.”

“Yeah, well, you would think that. You haven’t ever — you ever tried being with more than one person at once? Of course you haven’t. It gets complicated. Things get messy.”

_“You’ve_ done it before?”

He hadn’t, unless you counted simple one-night threesomes, but he’d seen it from the sidelines once or twice. “I’ve done a lot of things you haven’t done.”

Hardison was too smart to miss the evasion, and also too smart to comment on it. “I get that it could get complicated, and maybe hard sometimes, but that’s what we do. Stuff that’s complicated and hard.”

“If you think this is anything like pulling a job, you’re even more clueless than I thought.” He knew he was being mean. He could see the flash of hurt on Hardison’s face without even looking up. But the knife kept twisting, and it was so unfair that _he_ had to be the one to do this.

“That’s not what I meant,” said Hardison quietly, “and you know it. I just meant — I think we could handle it. I trust you, both of you. And I think it’d be worth it.”

He had to get it together. _Listen to you,_ that voice said. _‘It’s not fair’. Since when do you whine about what’s fair? You take the hits. You do it for them._

“There’s too much at stake.” He dared to look up, dared a few seconds of those soft dark eyes, because in this at least he was being a hundred percent sincere, and he needed Hardison to know that. “I meant what I said in the van. You two are everything to me. I can’t risk that. I can’t risk anything changing.”

He’d made that decision a long time ago, longer than Hardison would have believed. He’d known that what they had wasn’t for him, that he would never even ask or try. Most days he felt overwhelmingly lucky to have what he did have with them. And he knew when to stop pushing his luck.

Hardison slid to the next stool to be closer, and Eliot moved away. If Alec touched him, he was going to lose it.

“You’re scared,” said Hardison.

“You bet I am.”

“I’m not. You wanna know why?”

“Because you’re a romantic dumbass who thinks that if you just care hard enough, everything else will work out.”

Hardison laughed. “Nice, real nice, man. But no. That’s not why.”

There was a long pause. Eliot downed half his beer, then sighed, staring angrily out across the room. “You gonna tell me, then?”

“You tell me: What wouldn’t you do, if you had to, to make sure Parker was happy and safe?”

“Nothing,” he said at once. That wasn’t the question he’d expected, but it was an easy one.

Hardison nodded. “And what wouldn’t _I_ do, to make sure she was happy and safe?”

Eliot lifted his eyes to the ceiling, calculating. “Well —”

“I’m gonna stop you right there,” said Hardison quickly, “because if you’re about to start talking about, like, dismemberings or lighting people on fire, I do _not_ want to hear that. What wouldn’t I do, _that I could do,_ to keep her happy and safe?”

Eliot chuckled, in spite of everything. Hardison hadn’t been far off. “If you put it like that — nothing.”

“That’s right. And is anything that happens between us — any of us — gonna change that?”

“No.”

“Well there you go. That’s why I’m not scared.”

_So what?_ he could say. _Parker and I could have the exact same conversation about you, and how does that help?_ But that would be pretending to misunderstand; he knew what Hardison actually meant. It wasn’t about establishing some kind of pecking order or who-would-you-save-first agreement. It was about mission parameters. It was about understanding that however romance or sex might muddy the waters, the three of them were always going to fall into lockstep when it came to the bottom line: making sure the others were okay.

He couldn’t disagree with that, so he said nothing. After a minute, Hardison reached his empty glass across the counter to refill it, carefully avoiding moving any closer to Eliot.

“I feel the same way, you know. I can’t lose either of you. But I trust you, and I know that what we are goes way deeper than — than feelings and kissing and... uh, other stuff.” He looked very bashful suddenly, which was so adorable Eliot could hardly stand it. “That’s just icing on the cake. But I’d like to have it — with both of you.”

Eliot wanted to let that be it. For a moment he thought he could. He could vault over the bar and grab Hardison, he could kiss him till he gasped for air and then make him blush and stammer out exactly what he wanted Eliot to do to him, and then —

No. It wasn’t possible. He didn’t even know why anymore, he was out of reasons, he just knew it couldn’t happen. It was like a wall slamming down in front of him, and everything on the other side of that wall was completely untouchable. Instead of flying toward Hardison, he turned away, gulping down the rest of his beer and starting to rinse the glass. “I just don’t see it working,” he said.

“Why not?”

Eliot didn’t answer. He didn’t have an answer. All he had was the blank wall and the twisting knife.

“Is it — I mean, you can tell me if it’s just not how you feel. That’d be okay.”

Eliot had to concentrate to keep from smashing the glass he held. _Do it,_ he willed himself. _Turn around, look him in the eyes, and say you just don’t feel that way about him._ That would put an end to this for good. He could do it. Even Hardison tended to forget what a good liar he was, when he needed to be. But — for all he had kept this feeling locked up for years, for all he had intended nobody to find it out, ever, he couldn’t bring himself to outright deny it. It was one of the few pieces of himself he wasn’t even a little bit ashamed of.

“It’s not about how I feel. It’s about what I think is best, for all of us.” He turned around, looked at Hardison again, though not quite meeting his eyes. “I just don’t see it working, and it’s — it’s not worth it.” He made his gaze stay steady, made himself watch another flicker of hurt cross Hardison’s face. “It was just a — just a one-time thing. You need to forget it. I’m asking you to forget it.”

Hardison never stayed hurt for long. He saw too much. He was looking at Eliot now, seeing too much, and Eliot stood still under his gaze like he was doing penance. At last Hardison nodded. “Okay, Eliot. Okay. I’ll let it go.”

“Thank you.” Eliot felt hollow. Hardison stood up and slid his empty glass across. At the door he paused.

“I’ll pretend to forget it,” he said, “but if you ever want to talk about it again — door’s open.” He left without waiting for an answer.

Eliot stood there blankly, minute after minute, until he realized why he wasn’t moving. He was hoping, in some tiny, stupid part of his soul, that Hardison would walk back in and say something — he had no idea what — something that would make it feel possible, make that damned blank wall vanish into dust. But he wasn’t coming back, and there was nothing he could say if he did.

He was alone now and there was no need to hold back. He hurled the glass to the floor and listened to it shatter. Then he threw down Hardison’s, too. The sharp clash, the skidding fragments, were a tiny answer to the thing that was roaring inside him; better than nothing. He went back to the kitchen and smashed two full racks of pint glasses, dashing them one by one on the ground until it was covered with fragile, cutting shards.

The smashing gave his hurt a voice, but it was the cleaning up that let him feel like he had a grip on himself again. He had to be focused, and careful, and thorough, so that no one would get hurt the next day in the kitchen. He worked until sunrise, making sure he’d cleaned up every last sliver of glass.


	5. Chapter 5

Hardison kicked off his shoes and went straight to the bedroom. He flopped down on his back and lay there in the dark.

“How’d it go?” came a bright voice out of the corner.

He didn’t even twitch. Sometime in the last two years his startle reflex had gone completely dead when it came to Parker popping up out of nowhere. “Girl, how’d you get here so fast?” It was comforting in a way; if she wasn’t directly in his sight, he always walked around with the feeling that she could show up any time. When he needed her, she usually did.

“You said you were coming home alone.”

“Yeah, but you were halfway across town — you know what, never mind.” The less he knew about Parker’s methods of transporting herself, the less he’d worry. “It went — I dunno. Not how I hoped.”

“Obviously. He’s not here.” She sat crosslegged next to him on the bed. “What happened?”

“He just kept saying it wouldn’t work, and he wouldn’t tell me why.” That was the most frustrating part. He could solve problems, but he had to know what the problem was. He’d gone in prepared to troubleshoot any number of specific difficulties; he couldn’t troubleshoot a blank wall.

“Maybe he doesn’t know.”

“Yeah,” said Hardison, “maybe.” The disappointment was tight and bitter inside him. He looked up at her. “It just doesn’t seem right. Three days ago, I wasn’t even thinking of him like that. It shouldn’t feel this bad, not after just three days.”

Parker lay down with her head on his chest. “Did I make you this sad, the whole time you were waiting for me?” she asked.

He kissed the top of her head. “You didn’t ever make me sad. Not from the moment you told me you had feelings for me.”

“For pretzels,” Parker corrected. Hardison smiled.

“Yeah, for pretzels. I knew you were my girl, and I didn’t mind how long it took.”

“Why are you sad now? Don’t you know Eliot’s your guy?”

“I thought I did.” He never minded what Eliot said because he always knew what he meant. “I really thought... you know, you know how he is. He wasn’t ever gonna come out and say how he felt, that’s not what he does. I figured he’d argue a little and make me talk him into it... but he’d let me talk him into it, because it’s what he wanted too. That’s always how it is with us.” A new thought struck him. “Parker — have Eliot and I been flirting with each other for the last five years?”

“That’s a Sophie question,” she said against his chest.

“Yeah, of course it is.” He wasn’t going to ask Sophie though; just the thought of it made the ache in his chest tighten. It would have been so fun to tell her, if things had gone differently. “That’s not how it went though. He said no, and he meant it. He asked me to forget about it.”

Parker brushed her fingers up and down his arm, light but soothing. “What did you say?”

“I said I would. Now I guess I’m supposed to just pretend it never happened.” He squeezed her tightly. “That’s gonna suck. Being with him, and trying to act like I did a week ago, like I don’t feel — it’s gonna suck.”

Her fingers stopped moving, so he could tell she was thinking. “Maybe he needs more time.”

“Then why didn’t he ask for more time? I coulda lived with that.” At this point, he would have leapt for joy if Eliot said something like ‘yes, but not yet,’ or even ‘maybe.’

“Eliot doesn’t ask for things.”

True enough. He rolled her over so that they were lying side by side, facing each other. “Well, he’s got it, whether he asked for it or not. I told him if he wanted to talk again, I’d be here.”

Parker lifted herself up on her elbow. She kissed his cheek softly and looked down at him with a strange, poignant smile. “Alec, you’re the bravest person I know.”

Now _that_ was unexpected. “Girl, I’m not even the bravest person in this bed.”

“You are. I couldn’t ever do what you do. Neither could Eliot. We’re all broken and covered in sharp edges, but you keep reaching out, over and over.” She kissed his hand and his wrist, as if soothing imaginary cuts. “You could have picked some normal people to love.”

He stroked her cheek. “Nah. That doesn’t sound like any fun.” He’d tried a few times to tell her straight-up how in awe of her he was, how amazed and delighted he was by literally everything about her. She had a hard time hearing it, so he mostly tried to say it in other ways. He cupped her face and held it close to his. “Besides, it works out pretty well for me sometimes.”


	6. Chapter 6

“But how do we get every serial number of every bill locked up in the vault with only a thirty-second window to look? I’m so glad you asked. This here is a —”

“Would you just SHUT UP?” Eliot thundered.

Dead silence filled the room. Hardison’s cocky grin vanished as if it had never belonged to his face at all. Eliot was glaring at the table like it was personally responsible for a kidnapping. Parker watched them both.

It should have been a normal beat. Eliot got annoyed and snapped at Hardison’s preening all the time. This was nothing like that. His outbursts usually blew off steam, but now he looked like an engine ready to explode.

And Hardison, who had spent the last two days gamely trying to be as close to his old self as possible, was at his limit. “What do you want from me, man?” he said tensely. His voice was angry, but his eyes were pleading.

“Nothing!” Eliot shouted, pushing back so hard that the six-foot table rocked. He stormed toward the door.

“Eliot.” Parker’s tone, flat and commanding, stopped him. “Go down to the logging camp. See what you can find out.”

“We haven’t decided yet if —”

“I just did.”

The boys called it her ‘Nate voice.’ Planning and decisions were more collaborative these days, but when they heard that voice they jumped to it. Eliot went.

Once he was gone Hardison slumped over the table and laid his head on his arms. Parker came up behind him and stroked his head with one hand, holding both their comms in the other.

“It’s gonna be okay,” she said.

“How? I tried talking to him — I tried _not_ talking to him. He said he wanted to forget about it, I’m pretending to forget about it, how’m I supposed to do that if he’s gonna tear my head off whatever I say? I can’t keep doing this.” Despite Hardison’s efforts to act like nothing had happened, Eliot had been getting progressively crankier, until this morning’s outburst.

She sat on the table and kept stroking his head. “Who’s the mastermind here? _I’m_ going to talk to him. But not until after he’s spent a few hours wrestling giant trees.”

Hardison looked up. She was smirking a little, and he frowned. “Did you change the plan just to deal with our drama? Because that’s not... that’s not good, Parker. Damn it, maybe he was right. This is too much complication.”

Parker shook her head. “I didn’t change the plan. We still hadn’t decided whether he’d be in play at the camp or at the bridge; now we’ve decided.” She could see his concern if she squinted, but to Parker, as far as the job went, the needs of her crew were just two of many factors shaping the plan. Her job was to plot a route through all the obstacles a situation presented. “Come on; you set up his alias, I’ll tell the client he’s coming.”

***

Five hours of hard outdoor work had cleared away the buzzing red storm in Eliot’s head, and when Parker told him to come back to the office that night he was even slightly relieved. He knew he’d been an ass, he’d have to make it right, and if Parker was going to push him in that direction so much the better.

He was even more relieved that Hardison wasn’t there. He’d promised himself up and down that he was going to hold it together no matter how seeing Hardison made him feel, but that didn’t mean he was eager to be tested. He sat down across from Parker and waited for her to say something.

The silence stretched on until he started to reconsider his relief; Hardison, at least, would be talking by now. Parker was just looking at him, the way he’d seen her look at the exposed mechanism of a particularly fiendish safe.

“I don’t understand how you feel,” she said at last. “I thought maybe I would, but —” she shook her head. “I got angry about it too, but not like this. I only got angry at me.”

“You think I’m not angry at me?” he growled.

“No, I know you are. But you’re angry at him too. I don’t get that.” She said it without concern. Not getting it wasn’t a reflection on herself or on Eliot, it just was. That was one of the best things about Parker. Another was that she never expected him to talk if he didn’t want to, and right now he didn’t. He was prepared to apologize, he was prepared to make promises about how he would act in the future, but he wasn’t about to get into a conversation about exactly what he was feeling and why.

She picked up after a long pause, as if it hadn’t been any time at all. “When I first started having feelings for Hardison, I was scared of — pretty much everything. But even more than scared, I felt like it just wasn’t possible. He’s so good, and that wasn’t something I was supposed to have. He wasn’t for someone like me. You know that thing normal people do, when they’re all like, ‘I couldn’t possibly take that, it doesn’t belong to me!’” She said it with a goofy face and goofier voice, and thank God for that, because the rest of her words were opening up a giant pit in Eliot’s stomach. He gave her a half-smile and tried not to fall all the way in.

“I never got why anyone said that, until I started to think about actually being with Hardison. Sometimes I was mad at myself for wanting something I couldn’t have, and sometimes I was mad for being the kind of person who wasn’t supposed to have it.” She made a face, less funny now. “It felt awful.”

He still didn’t want to say anything, but the answer to this question was really, really important. “How’d —” The words got stuck. He gritted his teeth, started again. “How did you stop? Feeling like that?”

Parker shrugged. “I still do, sometimes. A lot less now. It just faded back, and I started to feel other things more often. I don’t know how. It took a long time.”

“I remember,” he said. He’d watched every minute of their courtship, tracking the slow uncertain dance with an interest he’d carefully avoided explaining to himself.

“Good. Then you know how patient he is. You have time. You don’t have to solve this whole thing at once. Just work the problem that’s in front of you.”

“How do you suggest I do that?” He meant it to sound like a challenge, as if Parker wouldn’t know it was a plea.

She shrugged again. “You have options. I think you should pick one that doesn’t involve pulling away and snapping, but that’s up to you. I’m not going anywhere, and Hardison’s not going anywhere, even if it hu— Oh!” Her face lit up, with the same triumphant beam she got when she cracked a combination.

Eliot looked at her warily. “What?”

“I just figured out why you’re mad at him.”

“I’m not here to be fucking psychoanalyzed!”

“It’s okay. I wasn’t going to tell you.” She looked at him with a new, fond smile. He kind of hated it, but only kind of. “Anyway. Trying to pull everything difficult into yourself isn’t protecting us — you see that now, right?” He blinked rapidly, registering that. Dammit, Parker. He wasn’t going to agree, just on stubborn principle, but she nodded as if he’d said _yes, of course, I see that._

“So pick something else.” She came around and dropped a kiss on the top of his head before he could react, then left him to the empty room.

Eliot had an ongoing debate with himself whether Parker knew what she was doing when she pulled their strings, or whether it was some unconscious Parker magic. Either way it was annoyingly effective. He’d never have sat there and listened to her explain why she thought he was angry at Hardison, but left alone with the question, it kept nagging at him. The last thing he wanted to do was think more about any of this, but the unanswered question came back relentlessly, and by morning, he’d figured it out too.


	7. Chapter 7

“Hey,” said Eliot, coming up behind Hardison’s desk.

“Hey.”

“Can we talk?”

Those were the last three words he _ever_ expected to hear out of Eliot’s mouth. He spun his chair so fast he had to stop it awkwardly on the other side. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. Do you want to go somewhere, or...”

Eliot shook his head. Instead of sitting, he stood by one of the other chairs, gripping the back of it and staring across the room. “Don’t have much to say, but I just — Look, you shouldn’t have to pretend, okay? You shouldn’t have to... fake acting normal just to make me comfortable. I’m sorry I asked you to.”

“Okay,” said Hardison. He had things to say to that, lots of them, but he wanted to see if Eliot had more.

“I don’t know what to do here. I thought this worked. You and Parker together, me over here. I’m okay with that, I’ve always been okay with that. It’s more than I ever thought I’d have. Way more than I deserve.”

“Eliot —”

“Don’t.” It was a full sentence, and Hardison heard the whole thing as if he’d spoken it. _Don’t tell me I deserve more, because nothing you say will make me believe it._ He shut his mouth again and let Eliot continue.

“I’ve been saying no to me for a long time, and I’m comfortable with that, you know, I’m fine with it. I thought I could just keep doing that. I didn’t think about it as saying no to you, too. I don’t know what to do with that. I gotta work it out.”

He looked at Hardison finally, frowning. “But you shouldn’t have to do what I’ve been doing. You shouldn’t have to act like there’s nothing... if there’s something. That’s not you, and seeing it pisses me off.”

Hardison tilted his head. “So it’s good enough for you, but not for me?” He meant it to be teasing, a little, but Eliot answered perfectly sincerely.

“Yeah.”

Hardison stood up. “That’s bullshit, man, you know that. Yeah it sucks to stand there and try to pretend I’m not feeling what I’m feeling, but if it sucks for me then it sucks for you...” he heard it for the first time, the implications of it. “You been doing that?”

Eliot didn’t answer. That was enough of an answer.

“For how long?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.” In his mind this had been brand new to both of them; the idea of Eliot wanting him silently, for however long, was both painful and thrilling.

“I can't say — it’s complicated.” Hardison could see the strain in his shoulders, his jaw, his hands. He could see how hard Eliot was fighting to stay here, to stay in this conversation instead of running away or hiding behind barbs, and it was that more than any actual words that was flooding Hardison with hope. Eliot swallowed. “When it comes to you and Parker, I don’t really ask myself what I want.”

“You could start.”

“Don’t need to.” Their eyes met, and the flash of fire in Eliot’s blue made Hardison’s knees go weak. What this man could do to him if he let go... It must have shown, that thought, because the hungry blue light grew keener and Eliot leaned forward just a fraction.

Then Hardison saw him shut it down. His face closed up, and he stepped back quickly, turning his back and going to the window. His arms were folded tightly. Hardison might have thought he’d imagined the hot, fierce promise of that look, except that Eliot’s shoulders were rising and falling hard.

“I don’t know how to do this,” said Eliot without turning around. “I don’t know if I can. But you should know: I’d want to, if I could.”

Hardison was only four steps away but he moved slowly, carefully, as if Eliot was a wild creature that might bolt. He stopped next to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. Eliot flinched for a minute, and then reached up and gripped Hardison’s hand tightly.

Hardison gripped back. “I got you.”

***

They were still standing like that when Parker got to the office a few minutes later. She took it in: Hardison’s hand on Eliot’s shoulder, Eliot’s hand clasped tight around it, both of them quiet. Parker smiled, and sat down to go over the day’s plan.

**Author's Note:**

> When I started writing this, I thought I'd end up further along the relationship trajectory. But my grumpy boy has a lot of damage and it didn't seem right to rush him into being ready. Parker got years to work on it, Eliot deserves the same patience - although I figure it'll take him maybe a couple of months, not years.
> 
> Yes, I want to do a sequel.
> 
> Thanks for reading, this is my first EVER fanfic and y'all's encouragement has been so inspiring that I'd want to keep doing it even if the writing itself hadn't been so fun!


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